The perfect Christmas tree

I grew up on a farm in Stokes County that had plenty of woods, streams and other farms nearby. A few weeks before Christmas, Mother would let us children roam the woods in search of a nice tree we would claim for our Christmas tree. We would return closer to the holiday to cut the cedar and bring it home.

For some reason one year, we could not find anything suitable. Finally, only two of us were left to search, one brother and myself. After a day of exhausting ourselves, we came through the yard of a neighbor on our way home, and there on the lower part of the yard was a perfect cedar. This neighbor and wife were in Florida for the winter, so we brought out our axe and came home with the perfect tree. Our mother could not believe we had found such a suitable tree, perfect in shape and size — just what we had been looking for.

We never told our family the story of the tree or we would have needed a pillow to sit on for quite some time. And we never knew what the neighbor thought had happened to the tree or if the huge pile of leaves hid all the evidence.